As Egypt’s regime totters on the verge of collapse, President Obama is looking less like Ronald Reagan and more like the Gipper’s predecessor, Jimmy Carter. The turmoil in Egypt is markedly similar to the revolution that gripped Iran 33 years ago. Egypt may be to Mr. Obama what Iran was to Mr. Carter. ...

... A hostage crisis may be the only part of this Carteresque rerun Mr. Obama can avoid.

Saturday, January 29, 2011

Update: I've just sent this e-mail to the Globe and Mail, The National Post, The Vancouver Sun and the Toronto Star:

To the editors:

I've searched the web in general and your newspapers' on-line material for references to the trial of Danish journalist and President of the Danish Free Press Society, Lars Hedegaard, for his so-called "hate" speech. This trial is an attack on free speech everywhere and yet nowhere but on the web (excluding the MSM) is it being covered at all.

You and your fellow mainstream "news" media are being labeled cowardly appeasers for your stance (or lack thereof) on this and similar cases.

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Especially if you're guilty. In Charles Lewis's column, he lays the blame on secularism for the trend away from personal responsibility, concluding:

... being forced to face one’s own sins can produce guilt, as it should. The point is to feel the pain of those wrongs, make it right with God and move on. It is the reason it is called the Day of Atonement and not the Day of Whining.

... freedom comes from an obedience to greater truths. It demands attention to the details of life. It asks that life not be a blur of excuses but freely exercised choices. And then it asks you to be an adult and take responsibility for all that you do.

Good points, but laying the blame on secularism doesn't quite do it for me. It's too broad a brush. The decline of personal responsibility and rise of whining can be more precisely attributed to neo-liberalism which has for decades been promoting bleeding heart social policy, criminal justice, education (eg. the cult of self- esteem), and on .. and on .... A good case in point is documented in another excellent NP article this week - the remarkable recovery of New York City from decades of decline under liberal policies. NYC was saved by secular conservatism.

Monday, January 24, 2011

Today, we lost our much beloved cat, Rufus, who we adopted from the Ottawa Humane Society in January of 1995 as a one year old. So he's been with us for 16 of his 17 years, moving from Ottawa to Victoria to Surrey. A real character, he took to the leash from the start and always looked forward to his almost daily neighbourhood walks where he enjoyed attention from people and their dogs.

After 5 weeks of battling what we thought was pancreatitis the final diagnosis turned out to be much worse, lymphoma. So, R.I.P. Rufus, we miss you.

Friday, January 21, 2011

There's a growing list of cases where crime victims face charges for the crime of .... defending their own property. Ontario alone has a string of them. ... from Caledonia to David Chen ....
and now Ian Thomson:

...last August ... 53-year-old former mobile-crane operator woke up to the sound of three masked men firebombing his Port Colborne home.

So Mr. Thomson, a former firearms instructor, grabbed one of his Smith & Wesson revolvers from his safe, loaded it and headed outside dressed in only his underwear ... exited his house and fired his revolver two, maybe three times ...

His surveillance cameras caught the attackers lobbing at least six Molotov cocktails at his house and bombing his doghouse, singeing one of his Siberian Huskies. But when Mr. Thomson handed the video footage to Niagara Regional Police, he found himself charged with careless use of a firearm.

The local Crown attorney's office later laid a charge of pointing a firearm, along with two counts of careless storage of a firearm. The Crown has recommended Mr. Thomson go to jail, his lawyer said.

Mr. Thomson said ... "This is just an absolute nightmare, this whole thing". ... "People need to know that this is what can happen to you, and which side of the victim line do you want to stand on? Lying down dead or in court? That's the way it seems it has to go."

Outrageous. Near useless police and worse than useless Crown attorneys. In these cases, the law isn't just an ass, it's a complete asshole.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

From Blazing Cat Fur comes word that Toronto based 'news blog' TheMuslim.cais calling for Islamist rule in Tunisia. The publisher of TheMuslim.ca isJaweed Anwar, who also happens to beco-chair of the Toronto District School Board. Lovely. Lots of scary links at BCF.

Sunday, January 16, 2011

The research based on an analysis of ocean buoy temperature measurements suggests that the oceans cooled between 2003 and 2008 ... this cooling does not support the idea that the oceans are stockpiling heat and ... does not support the idea that the Earth is in positive radiative balance ...

Physicists Robert Knox and David Douglass of the University of Rochester, New York, bluntly state in their paper that their research “does not support the existence of either a large positive radiative imbalance or a “missing energy.””

Climate "scientist" Kevin Trenberth of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) , who made famous the phrase “missing energy”, has reportedly dismissed the paper as “rubbish” ... [well argued, Trenberth] [my emphasis]

A couple of days ago near my neighbourhood there was an armed home invasion where one of the two collared perps was described as:

... a “prolific offender” with “quite a lengthy property-crime record.”

Forgive me for asking, but WTH was this guy doing on the street? He must have been a known 'bad apple' before graduating to "prolific offender". We need tougher sentencing. If we get it and that means bigger prisons then Tory policy is good policy.

Friday, January 14, 2011

Unreason. Hatred. Bitterness. Prejudice. This more or less summarizes the liberal chorus heard in the days after the Tucson shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. But all of the words quoted in the paragraph above were spoken or printed in 1963, in the days immediately following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

... Sometimes, lone gunmen just go out and do horrible things. Five decades after Dealey Plaza, this is a truth that intellectuals still can’t accept.

... three main narratives have emerged: (1) It’s all but inconceivable that the assailant wasn’t influenced or motivated by the violent rhetoric of certain Tea Party followers. (2) It’s all but inconceivable that he was influenced by them — insanity is just insanity, always. (3) He may or may not have been influenced by them, but while we’re here, let’s say how much we deplore violent political rhetoric, because nothing occurs in a vacuum, words have meaning or [insert alternative vacuous text explaining why we’re railing against something we just said might be irrelevant]. (4) What the hell is wrong with you people? We have very little idea what motivated him, and what we do know is an ideological dog’s breakfast.

In Camp One we have Judith Timson in The Globe and Mail, ... the Globe’s John Doyle, ... in the Toronto Star, we have Linda McQuaig, for whom there’s absolutely no doubt that “hostile, right-wing extremism” is to blame, along with the media who tolerate it. ...

And so on, ending with:

... people do realize Loughner’s going to have a trial, right? It’s reasonable to hope we’re eventually going to find out rather precisely what allegedly drove him over the edge. [Methinks this is a tad dubious. I'm not sure we can expect much precision from a madman as to his true motives. Plus, he's going to have lawyers who will do their best to mudify things sufficiently to keep their client off death row, including blaming "right-wing rhetoric".]

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

It is galling ... that Mr. Putin’s thuggish regime is constantly referred to as “Kremlin capitalism,” “state capitalism,” or “crony capitalism.”

Kremlinism, statism, and cronyism are all in fact negations of capitalism, which is a system based on private property and the rule of law. Government is needed to protect the system, but that does not mean that it is compatible with anything that government chooses to do.

... Many people understandably fail to grasp that capitalism is not necessarily what is either practised or preached by capitalists. Capitalism is an ideal, but unlike the socialismof state control it is anattainable, and moral, one. ...

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

A Saskatchewan farm couple whose land lies over the world’s largest carbon capture and storage project says greenhouse gases that were supposed to have been injected permanently underground are leaking out, killing animals and sending groundwater foaming to the surface like shaken-up soda pop. ...

I am very excited to announce the commencement of the Pro-Israel Blog-Off for 2011, my new initative designed to showcase the blogosphere’s best pro-Israel material in a fun and exciting manner.

Bloggers are invited to submit one ”pro-Israel” entry, whether it be a blog post, podcast, or video no older than 1 month. ... The process continues until we get to two finalists competing for an Apple iPad [woo hoo!].

Monday, January 10, 2011

About a microsecond after the shootings the MSM and every other leftist source on the planet began linking them to "extreme rhetoric" from Palin, the Tea Party and the right in general. Not much later some Republicans and RINOs like David Frum climbed on that bandwagon (pretty much anyone who wants Palin and the Tea Party to shut up and disappear).

While Frum acknowledeged:

" ... It makes no sense to talk of the “motive” of someone who is fundamentally irrational."

... he then went on to say:

... this talk did not cause this crime. But this crime should summon us to some reflection on this talk.

“As I knew him he was left wing, quite liberal. [and] oddly obsessed with the 2012 prophecy,” the former classmate, Caitie Parker, wrote..."

So, David, explain why something that had zip to do with the event should "summon us to some reflection" on anything? But assuming you could explain that, what is "this talk" you're talking about? Just Palin's and the Tea Party's? What about the clearly toxic daily rhetoric at leftist sites like MSNBC and Daily Kos? And isn't it odd that there should be fevered calls to stifle "the rhetoric" now, after eight years of Bush Derangement Syndrome complete with calls to "Kill Bush", "Hang Bush".

Sunday, January 9, 2011

The RCMP is a big organization, its officers have a tough job to do and it takes all kinds so it's bound to exhibit multiple personalities over time. But, of late, there just seems to have been a lot of weird crap:

But maybe it's a just statistical blip in what's been happening ever since the Klondike Gold Rush. My closest personal experience with questionable RCMP behaviour dates back to my teen years when my older brother was best buds with a local constable (they drank white lightning together). Said officer eventually went AWOL and was arrested for car theft.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

...While the article comes from the medical research field, it is sufficiently general that some of what it discusses can be applied to global warming research as well.

I would argue that the situation is even worse for what I consider to the central theory of the climate change debate: that adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere causes significant warming of the climate system....

The first problem ...A second related problem ...A third problem ...A fourth problem ... -- the source of funding ... I can’t think of a single scientific study that has been funded by an oil or coal company. But what DOES exist is a large organization that has a virtual monopoly on global warming research in the U.S., and that has a vested interest in AGW theory being true: the U.S. Government.

So, when some scientist says we “know” that warming is human-caused, I cringe at the embarrassing abundance of scientific ignorance on display. No wonder the public doesn’t trust scientific predictions — just as suggested by the 2005 study I mentioned at the outset, those predictions have almost always been wrong! [But what about that 97% 'consensus'?]

"Time magazine, theDallas County News ExaminerandFox Newsprovide their views on forthcoming battle between the incoming Congress and the Administration over carbon emission limits announced by the Environmental Protection Agency. A dozen states have filed suit to block the EPA's ability to regulate greenhouse gases, and Texas is outright refusing to comply with the new rules.

"Pajamas Media, in a reasoned argument, asserts that the EPA is attempting anend-run around democracy by using the 1970 Clean Air Act, with non-elected bureaucrats, trial lawyers and activist judges determining the content and direction of national policy."

This is a big deal for Canada because the declared Tory government "climate change" policy is to mirror US policy.

New Mexico is the only state besides California which has moved forward on comprehensive global warming regulations. The two states joined three Canadian provinces (British Columbia [Thanks Gord!], Ontario and Quebec) in the Western Climate Initiative. [Hmmm ... Ontario and Quebec in a "Western" initiative? A better handle would have been "Loony-Tunes Initiative".]Now, the new Republican Governor, Susana Martinez, has removed all members of New Mexico's Environmental Improvement Board because of its "anti-business" policies. The Governor also issued an executive order halting all pending regulations by executive branch agencies, to determine whether they hurt businesses in New Mexico.

... Yes, there are spare rooms in some private houses - space that, according to Mr Monbiot, people just don’t need. And which, therefore, they shouldn’t be allowed to have.

... Sadly, Mr Monbiot doesn’t share with us the details of his own living arrangements, such as whether or not he frivolously uses a room purely as an office or study - say, for the writing of Guardian articles. But perhaps his colleague Polly Toynbee will be spurred to throw open the doors to one of her two rather spacious estates. How about that nice villa in Italy? Or maybe Monbiot’s employer Alan Rusbridger could find a wiser, fairer use for the space currently occupied by his £30,000 grand piano?

... It's my own view that on the so-called "anti-imperialist" left, the truly progressive heart had already stopped beating at least a decade ago. True enough, the zombies have been stumbling around for much longer than that.

... The thing about the contemporary iterations of that decadence that gets at me like fingernails scratching on a blackboard is its cynical disregard for the bravery of hundreds of thousands of Afghans, especially, who every day take greater risks and make greater sacrifices in the struggle for the rule of law, free speech, womens rights and civil liberties than any of the rich-kid "anti-imperialists" have undertaken in their entire lives. ...

... This number will prove a new embarrassment to the pundits and press who use it. The number stems from a 2008 master’s thesis by student Maggie Kendall Zimmerman at the University of Illinois, under the guidance of Peter Doran, an associate professor of Earth and environmental sciences. The two researchers obtained their results by conducting a survey of 10,257 Earth scientists. The survey results must have deeply disappointed the researchers — in the end, they chose to highlight the views of a subgroup of just 77 scientists, 75 of whom thought humans contributed to climate change. Theratio 75/77 produces the 97% figure that pundits now tout.

In other words, it's just another exercise in politicized junk "science" with "researchers" setting out to confirm their biases and/or mislead the public.

... "small shuffle" ... In fact [he] barely cut the deck — a new Environment Minister, in the form of Peter Kent, to replace Jim Prentice, two new Ministers of State in Ted Menzies (Finance) and Julian Fantino (Seniors) and a Minister of State switch for Diane Ablonczy from Seniors to Foreign Affairs.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Liberal public safety critic, Mark ("The Mouth") Holland, says the Liberals will support a House Public Safety Committee report recommending "harm reduction" programs for prisons. "Harm reduction", as we all know by now, is progressive-speak for needle exchanges and "safe" injection sites aka "free dope and needles for dope addicts". Liberal enablers! Bah!

... Illicit drugs in federal prisons compromise the safety and security of correctional staff as well as our communities. Providing needles, even if it is done under the guise of harm reduction, means putting a potential weapon in the hands of convicted criminals. Further, drugs undermine the success of rehabilitation programs. ...

JR on:

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"It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences." -- C. S. Lewis